Under the Japanese Copyright Law, it is provided as follows. In a facility such as a library (Hereinafter, library or the like), which is intended to provide a library material (such as books, records, and other source materials) for a public use, if a person wishes a copy of literary work made available to the public for a purpose of use in a research or a study, the literary work may be partially duplicated (copied) as a non-profit business, by using the library material in the library or the like, provided that such a copy of the literary work made available is limited to one copy per person.
In short, copying of the library material in the library or the like is only allowed under certain limitations. Accordingly, it is necessary to prevent an illegal copying of the library material. For example, in order to prevent the illegal copying operation, the library material is copied by a staff member of the library or the like, or a user is monitored while he/she is copying the library material. However, in either cases, it is the staff member of the library or the like who carries out these tasks. Accordingly, the staff member has to bear an extra burden.
In order to solve the problem, an illegal book-copying prevention system is introduced (e.g., See Patent document 1). When a user him/herself is copying a book, the system recognizes the book to be subjected to the copying operation, so as to monitor and control the copying operation of the book on a book-by-book basis.
Patent document 1 discloses an illegal book-copying prevention system including: a machine-readable marking provided to a book; a reading device for reading the marking; a copying device; a database storing therein copy-information for use in judging whether or not to allow the copying of the book; a data processing device for providing a copy-regulating instruction, based on the marking and the copy-information; and a copy-regulating device for regulating a copy count in the copying device, in accordance with the copy-regulating instruction from the data processing device.
The illegal book-copying prevention system judges whether or not to allow the copying of the book, and regulates the copy count, so as to prevent the illegal copying operation. The judgment of whether or not to allow the copying operation is made by: (A) storing, in the data base, information indicating whether or not the copying of the book is enabled, and/or (B) identifying (i) a book type, e.g., if the book is a periodical literature or not, (ii) date of publication, and (iii) a period of time having elapsed since the date of publication. Further, the copy count is regulated as follows. Namely, the copying operation is disallowed when a copy count in a copying device exceeds an allowed copy count which is stored in a database, the allowed copy count being determined on a book-by-book basis. Further, an element of copy-log is added to the database so as to accumulate the count of copies made by using the copying machine, and the copying operation is disallowed when the copy count reaches a predetermined copy count within a certain period. Further, a personal ID for identifying a user is added to the database so that the personal ID is read when the user uses the copying machine, and the copying operation is disallowed when the copy count exceeds a predetermined copy count which is determined on a user-by-user basis.
Patent Document 1
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2003-302880 (Tokukai 2003-302880; published on Oct. 24, 2003)
With the configuration of Patent document 1, however, it is not possible to sufficiently prevent the illegal copying operation which fails to comply with the regulation determined under the Copyright Law. Under the Copyright Law, it is prescribed that copying of the library material shall be limited to one part of a library material per person, and that the copied material shall be used in a research. In addition, “one part” is generally interpreted as “approximately a half” of the library material.
The configuration of Patent document 1 merely counts a total copy count, so as to keep the total copy count from exceeding the allowed copy count, and is not capable of judging whether or not the copied material is for use in a user's research. Further, merely counting of the total copy count allows a person to make plural copies of an identical page. Therefore, the configuration of Patent document 1 is not able to so regulate the copying operation as to satisfy the requirement of “one part of a library material per person”. In conclusion, it is not possible to sufficiently prevent the illegal copying operation which fails to comply with the Copy Right Law.